Should Judge Blackwood Be Criminally Prosecuted?

PETITIONING GOVERNMENT NOW A CRIME PUNISHABLE WITH PRISON TIME

by Sharon Rondeau

(Jun. 30, 2014) — 12:40 p.m. EDT – The petition launched at change.orgon Sunday calling upon the Tennessee judiciary to cease and desist its illegal arrest, charging and conviction of innocent citizens for attempting to expose government corruption has garnered 55 signatures as of this writing.

The petition specifically demands that Senior Judge Jon Kerry Blackwood vacate the verdict of a jury from last Tuesday which convicted CDR Walter Francis Fitzpatrick, III (Ret.) of “aggravated perjury” and “extortion” after attempting to petition the McMinn County grand jury with evidence of crimes committed by the judges, prosecutors and grand jury foremen of Tennessee’s Tenth Judicial District.

One of the signers, Col. Harry Riley (Ret.), is founder of Operation American Spring (OAS) and has called upon numerous federal officials to resign their posts for violations of their oaths to the U.S. Constitution. In a comment left under his signature on Monday, Riley stated:

Judicial illegal activity has become tyranny in the U.S. What is the matter with “we the people” in Tennessee?? These judges, prosecutors, jury foreman are criminals that should be prosecuted.

Since late 2009, Fitzpatrick has exposed systemic corruption in the Tennessee courts which has been borne out by many other victims and members of the Tennessee House of Representatives and Senate. In Tennessee, no private citizen can bring evidence or a criminal complaint to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) or the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee, as The Post & Email has recently re-confirmed.

For decades, criminal court judges have been appointing grand jury foremen, who often exert undue influence on the grand jury, which affects whether or not they issue an indictment against an accused. Last Tuesday, Fitzpatrick’s conviction was issued as a result of of a tainted grand jury which, in January, had been prejudiced by then-McMinn grand jury foreman Jeffrey Cunningham and then voted to indict Fitzpatrick in March.

Blackwood refused to consider that the grand jury’s indictment of Fitzpatrick was affected by Cunningham’s informing of them of Fitzpatrick’s “history” in January and the escorting of the grand jury members out of the courthouse after Fitzpatrick was asked to leave, giving them the impression that he was a dangerous person.

One grand jury said in sworn testimony in a pre-trial hearing in the Fitzpatrick case that she voted to indict because she herself felt “threatened” by Fitzpatrick based on what she had been told.

Blackwood upheld the indictments and the convictions.

Prosecutor A. Wayne Carter claimed that Fitzpatrick lied in petitions he attempted to submit to the grand jury over a period of months and which were blocked by Cunningham, but in sworn testimony last Monday, Cunningham stated that Fitzpatrick made no misstatements.

Fitzpatrick’s attorney, Van Irion, claimed that Fitzpatrick had exercised his constitutional right to petition his government for the redress of grievances under the First Amendment, “to do what the law plainly allows.”

During his closing argument at the trial, Carter objected to Fitzpatrick’s having worn his Navy uniform to the trial, although a congressional statute allows retirees to do so.

The Post & Email launched a second petition at whitehouse.gov here:

urging that the FBI be tasked with launching a criminal investigation into public corruption in Tennessee, which has been ranked thirdin corruption in a recent research study.

Since at least 1980, Blackwood has participated in choosing grand jury foremen who have worked for years and sometimes decades in violation of Tennessee code.

The conviction of a citizen without a proper trial is called “attainder.”

Assaults on the First Amendment have increased under the Obama regime to include as targets veterans, homeschoolers, religious freedom groups, Second Amendment advocates, Tea Parties, traditional marriage and pro-life groups.

As a result of Tuesday’s verdict, in Tennessee and the nation as a whole, petitioning the government for redress is now a crime punishable by prison time. How many are willing to live with that?

Sunday, 29 June 2014

A CHRISTIAN CITIZEN, EUGENE WITING’S PREAMBLE

“The Constitution of the United States is dead.

“On June 24 2014 in Judge Kerry Blackwood’s court the Constitutional rights of Commander Walter Fitzpatrick were taken away. His right to present to the Grand jury redress of grievances of massive government corruption was denied.

“Please note that his rights under the Constitution are the same as yours and when Commander Fitzpatrick lost his rights so did you. There will be a federal civil rights trial in the near future over this miscarriage of justice.

“Commander Fitzpatrick was found guilty with hearsay and lies on the part of the prosecutor Mr. Carter [Colonel, U.S. Army Retired] and [banker – attorney] Mr. Jeffry Cunningham. There was and never will be any proof of guilt. Mr. Cunningham denied Commander Fitzpatrick his right ( and yours ) to present to the Grand jury redress of grievances against the judicial side of Government of McMinn County TN. [Cunningham] also broke the law by not recusing himself when he knew what was in the presentment to the grand jury.

“The prosecutor Carter would not even honor Commander Fitzpatrick by calling him Commander. All you Vets beware you may be next if you have the courage of your convictions and keep your oath to our nations military to stand for freedom.

“Note there are more Americans in prison in the United States per capita than any country in the world. Many of which do not deserve to be in prison put there by a rigged grand jury. Some are guilty of “thinking “ about doing something. Now the thought police are on the seen.

“Juries are so important that they can even nulify bad laws. Did you know that? The defense is banned to even bring that up in the court room.

NOW, SHARON RONDEAU’S REPORT

First Amendment Dead in Tennessee pb

Posted By Sharon Rondeau On Saturday, June 28, 2014 @ 4:37 PM In National |

WHAT DOES THAT MEAN FOR THE REST OF THE COUNTRY?

by Sharon Rondeau

(Jun. 28, 2014) — The same McMinn County, TN grand jury which was prejudiced by its foreman in January issued a presentment in March charging CDR Walter Francis Fitzpatrick, III (Ret.) with extortion, harassment, stalking, and aggravated perjury.

On Tuesday, Fitzpatrick wasconvictedon the counts of extortion and aggravated perjury but acquitted of harassment. Judge Jon Kerry Blackwood, who was ordered to leave the bench in an unrelated case because of questions about his “impartiality,” dismissed the charge of “stalking” prior to the end of the trial.

On numerous occasions since late 2012, Fitzpatrick had attempted to submit evidence of crimes committed to the McMinn County grand jury in an exercise of his First Amendmentright to “petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

In Tennessee’s Tenth Judicial District, which includes McMinn, Polk, Bradley and Monroe Counties, the grand juries alternate months of service so that the January group skips February and is convened again in March, then in May.

In January, then-grand jury foreman Jeffrey Cunningham had “informed” the grand jury of Fitzpatrick’s “history” after Fitzpatrick attempted to submit evidence of misconduct on the part of public officials to include Cunningham, the criminal court judges, prosecutors, and local law enforcement. Fitzpatrick had asked Cunningham to recuse himself from the matter since he was named in the complaint, in accordance with state law, a point which Fitzpatrick’s attorney, Van Irion, raised during the trial.

One of the grand jurors said she voted to indict Fitzpatrick because she felt “intimidated” by him after what Cunningham had told the group in the grand jury room.

Cunningham refused to remove himself from presenting any of Fitzpatrick’s petitions to the grand jury while he served as foreman, reportedly resigning on March 4 of this year.

In February, Cunningham threatened Fitzpatrick with arrest if he should make another effort to bring a submission to the grand jury.

Blackwood was not impartial in Fitzpatrick’s case, as he had refused Fitzpatrick’s request without a hearing for a subsequent restraining order against Cunningham.

At issue was the hand-selecting of the grand jury foreman by the criminal court judges, a practice dating back decades in Tennessee but which is found nowhere in state code. The Tennessee Rules of Criminal Procedure mandate that the grand jury foreman, while chosen by the judge, “must possess all the qualifications of a juror.” A person chosen without the same vetting process as those selected in accordance with state law may or may not possess those “qualifications.”

The Fifth Amendment in the Bill of Rights is the only place in our founding documents which mentions the grand jury. One legal source notes it as a “protection against abuse of government authority.” When the Constitution was under deliberation, a Bill of Rights was insisted upon by the anti-Federalists, who feared that a central government created by the states would overreach its constraints and usurp power from the people.

Since Cunningham admitted that Fitzpatrick’s claims were accurate during testimony, it is unknown how the conviction on “aggravated perjury” materialized. In Tennessee law, “extortion” signifies an attempt to “coerce” someone to do something.

There must be a unanimous finding of guilt for a conviction. A legal analysis of the provisions of the Sixth Amendment, which includes the right to a trial by a jury of one’s peers, states:

By the time the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights were drafted and ratified, the institution of trial by jury was almost universally revered, so revered that its history had been traced back to Magna Carta. 42 The jury began in the form of a grand or presentment jury with the role of inquest and was started by Frankish conquerors to discover the King’s rights…

The guarantees of jury trial in the Federal and State Constitutions reflect a profound judgment about the way in which law should be enforced and justice administered. A right to jury trial is granted to criminal defendants in order to prevent oppression by the Government. Those who wrote our constitutions knew from history and experience that it was necessary to protect against unfounded criminal charges brought to eliminate enemies and against judges too responsive to the voice of higher authority. The framers of the constitutions strove to create an independent judiciary but insisted upon further protection against arbitrary action. Providing an accused with the right to be tried by a jury of his peers gave him an inestimable safeguard against the corrupt overzealous prosecutor and against the compliant, biased, or eccentric judge. . . . [T]he jury trial provisions . . . reflect a fundamental decision about the exercise of official power–a reluctance to entrust plenary powers over the life and liberty of the citizen to one judge or to a group of judges. Fear of unchecked power . . . found expression in the criminal law in this insistence upon community participation in the determination of guilt or innocence.” 48

With the systemic corruption within the Tennessee courts as reported by The Post & Email over more than four years, it is difficult to know whether or not the jury was “impartial” in Fitzpatrick’s case.

The prosecutor, A. Wayne Carter, said that Fitzpatrick lied in his attempted grand jury submissions, but Cunningham said that Fitzpatrick’s statements were accurate.

Carter retired from the U.S. Army as a “full-bird” colonel and has asked that Fitzpatrick be sentenced as a “career criminal” with enhanced sentencing for attempting to exercise his constitutional rights to petition the grand jury. Carter excoriated Fitzpatrick for wearing his Navy uniform by asking, “How dare he wear his uniform here? How dare he?”

Title 10 U.S.C., Section 772 (c) permits the wearing of a military uniform by retirees. Fitzpatrick served in the Navy for 24 years and was honorably discharged.

In his submission, Fitzpatrick had attempted to inform the grand jury that its then-foreman, Jeffrey Cunningham, was acting outside the law by failing to inform them that he was a court employee hand-selected by Judge Amy Reedy rather than empaneled from a randomly-chosen jury pool as state law requires. No one objected when Irion stated in a pre-trial hearing that Cunningham was an employee of the Tenth Judicial District rather than an empaneled juror; however, during the trial, both Carter and Cunningham characterized his role as “a juror.”

Last fall, Tennessee Attorney General Robert E. Cooper’s office issued a brief to an appellate court which stated unequivocally that the grand jury foreman “is not impaneled” as the other grand jurors are.

In Monroe County, grand jury foreman Gary Pettway was described in an indictment against Fitzpatrick as “a juror.”

Cunningham was “selected” when Reedy called him “at home” one evening and asked him to serve as her “next grand jury foreman” for McMinn County beginning in 2012.

As the alleged victim of the crimes, Cunningham testified on the witness stand that the statements in Fitzpatrick’s criminal complaints were accurate. Carter insisted that they were not. Cunningham retracted his position as Fitzpatrick’s accuser at the pre-trial hearing, and no police report or sworn statement was produced.

How, then, did the jury reach its conclusions?

Innocent men and women have spent years, and sometimes decades, in state prisons in Tennessee because of corrupt judges.

During Fitzpatrick’s trial, a rally calling upon a raise in the minimum wage was held outside the courthouse. With last week’s jury verdict – that petitioning the Government for a redress of grievances is a felony – such future rallies will no longer be possible under the First Amendment.

The Obama regime targeted Tea Party, Second Amendment, pro-life, Christian, traditional-marriage groups and even a U.S. senator beginning in 2010 in an effort to quell their freedom of speech guaranteed under the First Amendment. Obama operatives have been actively involved in silencing anyone investigating Obama’s background, life story, birthplace, or the veracity of his statements. At the time of this writing, at least one of the operatives is facing criminal indictment for some of the same “crimes” of which Fitzpatrick was accused.

Beginning approximately three weeks ago, Fox News, Fox News Radio, and The Washington Times began to openly discuss the issue about Obama’s eligibility, birthplace, and life narrative, ending a six-year media blackout on the subject. Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who launched an investigation at an undisclosed time after his Cold Case Posse declared that Obama’s long-form birth certificate and Selective Service registration form were fraudulent, has told The Times that he is “honing in” on the creators of the forgeries.

Now, almost daily, new revelations of corruption, intimidation, possible blackmail and illegal leaking of confidential information on the part of the regime are made by internet and broadcast media.

On March 17, 2009, Fitzpatrick filed a criminal complaint of treason against Obama for being a “foreign born domestic enemy.” After filing it on the federal level, Fitzpatrick attempted to take it to the Monroe County grand jury, where he resided at the time. It was then that he discovered that Tennessee grand jury foremen serve for years, and sometimes decades, at the pleasure of criminal court judges.

Five years ago, Fitzpatrick was a lone voice naming Obama in the commission of treason. Today he is not.

Adm. James A. Lyons (Ret.), formerly Commander, Pacific Fleet while CDR Fitzpatrick served in the Pacific Fleet, has described Obama’s actions as “the agenda an enemy would devise.” On June 23, Lyons wrote in an op-ed in The Washington Times:

…What’s happening to America’s standing in the world is not due to incompetence, as some have claimed. This is planned. We are witnessing the Obama administration’s embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood creed, which is to destroy America from within. Congress must be responsible to take back America. Nothing less is acceptable.

Numerous othershave joined the chorus accusing Obama oftreason against the United States of America.

Radio show host Carl Gallups, who is privy to some of the investigative findings of Arpaio and the Cold Case Posse, said on his “Freedom Friday” show last night that Obama comes from a “deep Sunni [Muslim] background.” During the 2008 campaign, Obama claimed he was a committed Christian, but his actions have belied his words as he continues to arm Islamic radicals throughout the Middle East.

Gallups also asserted that “we know” that blackmail was used by the regime as an attempt at intimidation, although he did not elucidate further.

In January 2010, Fitzpatrick wrote of the corruption in the Tennessee courts:

Judges and prosecutors trashed our grand juries in favor manufacturing a dark, secret machine few know about or know how to operate. The state designed and manufactured the machine to take direct action against people the state criminally accuses.

The machine and its operation are necessarily cloaked and hidden in order to keep the machine running smoothing without outside interference. Secrecy further gives cover to government criminals self-absorbed in protecting themselves and government criminal cohorts operating similar machines throughout Tennessee State and throughout America.

In The Post & Email’s first report on Tennessee judicial corruption entitled “The Face of Treason,” Fitzpatrick described the criminality of a long-serving grand jury foreman as “breathtaking and beyond people’s ability to believe.”

At the Bundy Ranch in April, BLM agents retreated after a large group of people arrived to defend the Bundys’ property and right to graze their cattle on the land in dispute. Of the entrenched judicial corruption in Tennessee, Fitzpatrick has said, “It’s going to take large numbers of people standing up.”

“But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.” — John Adams

(Feb. 7, 2014) — This came back to me this morning…thought it important to pass along.

Eight days ago, on Thursday, 30 January 2014, Assistant U.S. AttorneyLuke A. McLaurinsaid out loud inopen federal courtthat I’d met with Darren Huff on Tuesday, 7 April 2010 to “consult” in a concerted plan that (according the the government) was “intended” to carry out violent acts of domestic terrorism in Madisonville, TN on 20 April 2010.

McLaurin represents that I, Walter Francis Fitzpatrick, III, was the leader of a collection of 8 or 9 militia groups targeting Madisonville in an armed assault that was to be carried out using guns and bombs.

There was no such plan. The government made it all up.

There was no such meeting between myself or Darren EVER!

There were no such meetings of any type or kind by anyone.

Not me.

Not Darren.

Government operatives made it all up as part of their MADISONVILLE HOAX.

Not any of the court-watchers who arrived in Madisonville on 20 April 2010 intended to do anything else but to watch the courtroom proceedings. Not one of the court-watchers (all turned away) carried a weapon of any description.

But there was one very focused and concerted meeting I did have in April 2010!

That meeting involved my “concerted” and continuing effort to expose government corruption in Tennessee State.

On Wednesday, 8 April 2010, THE DAY AFTER THE FBI SAYS I MET WITH DARREN IN THE DOMESTIC ASSAULT PLANNING MEETING, I voluntarily drove to Knoxville unannounced to present myself to the FBI DUTY AGENT.

“(*Note: The most recent report to the FBI in Knoxville was made in person to Duty Special Agent Whitehouse on Wednesday, 8 April 2010. The report was made face-to-face in the FBI Knoxville Division office. S/A Whitehouse said to send another package in, they’d take a look at it.)”

The quote above comes from aJAG HUNTER posting originally published on 1 May 2010 (the day after Darren’s 30 APRIL 2010 arrest) and updated on 2 and 3 May. CLICK HERE.

I recall the exchange vividly. I gave Whitehouse my card identifying myself as a Navy man. I wore a jacket with the words “UNITED STATES NAVAL ACADEMY” embroidered on the front. Whitehouse told me he was a former Navy helicopter pilot. I asked him if he recalled the 30 July 1987 Persian Gulf SH-3 SEA KING “Desert Duck” crash. He did. I identified myself as one of the survivors from that at-sea explosion and auguring into the sea. CLICK HERE.

My report then moved on from that digression into the massive corruption in East Tennessee. Whitehouse knew of the problem. Whitehouse said that the FBI wouldn’t know where to begin in an investigation. S/A. Whitehouse continued to offer that the FBI could cry “distress” if ever tasked with such a Herculean investigative campaign, meaning that the FBI wouldn’t have the necessary resources for the FBI to answer the call to duty.

I arrived at the FBI office in downtown Knoxville on Wednesday, 8 April 2010 at 1015 hours local. I left at 1215 hours local.

Unbeknownst to me at the time (Whitehouse did not disclose any details regarding the concerted planning effort going on behind closed doors to the execution of The MADISONVILLE HOAX), was that the FBI and local Tennessee State law enforcement officials were working in frenetic “FUSION” with each other–IN THEIR FUSION CENTER, to carry out their massive military-style deployment that eventually came to pass in Madisonville, Tennessee on 20 April 2010.

So, there you have the real report regarding my “concerted” planning and focus beginning in the second week of April 2010.

It wasn’t me planning any violence but rather government functionaries such as those I’ve named going over the course of the past four years.

For additional background:CLICK HEREshould your time and interest allow.

The FBI currently includesthose who make “references to the Bible, The Constitution of the United States, U.S. Supreme Court decisions, or treaties with foreign governments” as possible “Sovereign Citizens.”

Located in McMinn County, Athens is the site of the “Battle of Athens” which took place in 1946 between a small group of World War II veterans and a corrupt sheriff and his deputies who routinely engaged in voter fraud and intimidation, bribery, and false ticketing for personal gain, among other vices. Southeastern Tennessee is well-known for its systemic, top-to-bottom public corruption which has terrorized its citizens by means of rigged juries and false imprisonments; racketeering, money laundering, shake-downs, police brutality and intimidation; and evenmurder.

Local media tellhalf-truthsand do not challenge longstanding government practices or specific individuals, includingJoe Guy.

Fitzpatrick had previously exposed that grand juries in Tennessee’s Tenth Judicial District operate illegally because the foreman, and in some cases, jurors, serve formultiple termsat the pleasure of the presiding judge. His discovery of grand jury corruption in adjacent Monroe County in late 20o9 was the subject of the PANDAradio showon Sunday, February 2, hosted by Chuck Smith and Lorri Anderson, on which grand jury experts Dr. Roger Roots and Kelly Mordecai appeared as guests and specifically discussed Fitzpatrick’s revelations. While acknowledging widespread government control over modern grand juries, Roots commented that he had never observed the same level of judicial corruption as exists in the state of Tennessee.

On Sunday evening, Fitzpatrick had given Athens Police Chief Charles Ziegleradvance notice by email that he would be arriving on Monday morning to file a complaint, to which Ziegler responded that he would make one of his detectives available when Fitzpatrick arrived. Det. HeIth Willismet with Fitzpatrick for four hours, wherein Fitzpatrick showed Willis documentation of theSovereign Citizencampaign naming him as a potential criminal and the current grand jury foreman, Jeff Cunningham, who is an attorney and activememberof the Tennessee Bar Association.

Fitzpatrick has attempted to bring criminal evidence on the parts of Cunningham and Reedy to the McMinn County grand jury, but Cunningham, acting as gateguard, did not allow the grand jury to review Fitzpatrick’s documentation.

Willis is a former Warrant Officer in the U.S. Army who Fitzpatrick described as “a really good guy.” Of the meeting, Fitzpatrick told The Post & Email:

We started at 10:30 and talked until 1:30 straight. He doesn’t know what to do. He is as frustrated in what the next step looks like as I am. He said, “We don’t have jurisdiction within the courthouse,” and I said, “I know that.” He said that other agencies have jurisdictions that are senior to ours, and normally speaking, when cases like this come in, we have to turn them over to other agencies.

Fitzpatrick said he concentrated on a complaint naming Guy and Cunningham as criminals which he attempted to take to the McMinn County grand jury on January 21. However, Cunningham himself, knowing that he had been named in at least one other of Fitzpatrick’s criminal complaints, obstructed the submission from reaching the grand jurors and demanded that McMinn County sheriff’s deputies escort Fitzpatrick out of the courthouse, despite his having committed no crime.

Guy is running for re-election in November. Cunningham is serving his third consecutive year as grand jury foreman, appointed by Judge Amy Reedy, who Fitzpatrick observedhand-picking grand jury members on December 7, 2011.

Fitzpatrick’s complaint against Guy is based on Guy’s enlisting of his deputies in the “Sovereign Citizen” training program in which Fitzpatrick is pictured along with Darren Wesley Huff and George Raudenbush. Huff is currently serving a four-year federal prison term for a crime that “never happened,” while Raudenbush was released last month on bond after his convictions were reversed by a Tennessee appeals court and have been remanded back to Monroe County for a new trial.

Fitzpatrick asked Willis for any assistance he might be able to provide in speaking with others “within his circle of influence” about the training program naming Fitzpatrick as a “sovereign.” On Friday, Fitzpatrick had called the Internal Affairs Officer in the McMinn County Sheriff’s Department to request a meeting but received no response. Last year, Fitzpatrick had visited the sheriff’s department on multiple occasions to file a complaint about the training program, but his objections were brushed aside.

Fitzpatrick was intimidated as a ringleader of “eight or nine militia groups” as described by FBI Special Agent Mark Van Balen, who has not yet been called to account for his false report which ultimately landed Huff in federal prison.

On Thursday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Luke A. McLaurin falsely stated to three judges at the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals that Fitzpatrick and Huff had exchanged “text messages” prior to and on the morning of April 20, 2010 in order to “plan” a “takeover” of the Monroe County courthouse. Dubbed “the Madisonville Hoax” by Fitzpatrick, between 100 and 200 law enforcement officers were deployed into Monroe County’s central town of Madisonville to diffuse reported threats from alleged “extremists” and “militia” groups, all of which proved to be false reports called in to the mayor’s office by members of The Fogbow, a group of Obama sycophants who may now be under observation by law enforcers themselves.

Although no one was seen carrying a firearm that day, false reports made by law enforcers were repeated in the media without proof. No arrests were made that day. However, ten days later, Huff was arrested and charged with two federal firearms violations and convicted on one in October 2011.

At Huff’s trial, there was no mention of “text messages,” and Fitzpatrick was never charged with participating in a conspiracy to commit violence. While McLaurin admittedthat Huff was not charged with “conspiracy,” he then fabricated statements to the appeals panel by stating that Huff and Fitzpatrick had worked together to “plan” a violent convergence upon the Madisonville courthouse on April 20, 2010.

“It’s all lies,” Fitzpatrick said. “I had no contact whatsoever with Darren Huff by phone, email or text messaging. I do not text,” he said.

Fitzpatrick further detailed his conversation with Willis:

I told him, “This, for me, is a last resort. I don’t know who else to go to. I told him about my interactions with the TBI, the sheriff’s department and FBI…the guy was amazed. He knows that I have my ducks in a row and why I’m concerned about the Sovereign Citizen program. I told him how I tried to get my name off of it again and again.

We talked about Jim Miller’s murder.

We have the report about what the U.S. attorney did last Thursday. I can’t make the complaint to the DOJ because they’re the culprit. I can’t get into a grand jury setting because the U.S. attorney’s office is the one obstructingme.

I showed him the picture that’s hanging someplace in the Tennessee Highway Patroloffices in the state, and I said, “I’m tired of this; I want this to stop.” He understood and said, “I’ll do what I can, but my jurisdiction has lines around it. I’m limited.” He understood why I was there yesterday and that it was a last resort. He knows all the other steps I have taken.

Joe Guy is running for re-election. His photo was at the top ofThe JAG HUNTERon Monday morning with a caption underneath it that he is still using the Sovereign Citizen training program with his deputies.

Joe Guy can be held accountable. People can go into the grand jury; they can do a letter-writing campaign, or Tim Smith, who is running against Guy, can take it up as a campaign issue. He knows that if he wants to talk with me, he can. If he gets in touch with me, we’ll move forward from there. Joe Guy will have to deal with it; he’s answerable to it.

The training program continues to put me in harm’s way, and the detective sergeant agreed.

I’ve talked to a lot of people in law enforcement. I told Det. Willis that I know what happens if I get stopped by anybody at this point, and I’m not interested in having that happen for an officer and certainly not for me. Everybody I’ve talked to about this is in complete agreement that I’ve got to stop being described in this way. He asked me about a civil suit, and I said, “I don’t have that kind of money.”

Fitzpatrick explained that the Sovereign Citizen training program is not given by the McMinn County Sheriff’s Department, but rather, by the Tennessee Department of Safety under the state’s Department of Homeland Securityin various locations. However, “What Joe Guy could do is to stop sending his deputies to the training program,” Fitzpatrick said. “It’s not his training program, so he doesn’t have control over what’s in it, but he has to understand that he’s accountable for using it.”

Fitzpatrick said that he first made Guy aware of the training program two years ago, to which Guy had responded, “It is what it is. Deal with it.”

The Post & Email had previously requested documentation on the program through an Open Records request to the Tennessee Department of Homeland Security and was quoted a fee of approximately $750.

Fitzpatrick said that he took with him three boxes of information to his meeting with Willis. “I needed a hand truck to take them into the conference room. I told him I had three more boxes at home,” Fitzpatrick said. Of the remainder of the meeting, he continued:

He was very interested in the VAN BALEN affidavitand how Darren got arrested at all, and why he wasn’t arrested that day. He was very interested about the workings of April 20, 2010. I showed him the matrices I have for the 30 people who were there. These statements that were made last week in open court are lies, and I’m trying to get this information into a grand jury setting, and I can’t.

He kept telling me all through the course of the meeting, “I’m a detective, and I deal with facts.” And I gave him facts. If nothing else, this is another foray into the world of law enforcement.

At the beginning, he had a patrolman in the room, and the patrolman left. So it was him and me for the last three-quarters of the meeting. I gave the patrolman and Willis a copy of the Advocate & Democrat article which published four years ago today. I said, “This is what we thought back in the day about Pettway and term limits, and now we’ve been told differently.” I showed him the paragraph from theHIXSON BRIEFand put it next to the felony indictment which named Mr. Pettway as a juror.

[Editor’s Note: In September, Tennessee Deputy Attorney General Kyle Hixson wrote in an appellate court brief in a pending case of Fitzpatrick’s that the grand jury foreman has never been considered “a juror,” as he is selected by a judge using a different process than that which is used for grand jurors. However, in June 2010, both Huff and Fitzpatrick were indicted by the Monroe County grand jury for “intimidating a juror” in a reference to the grand jury foreman. The contradiction between the attorney general’s office and the legislative branch, which wrote the laws on grand juries, has not been reconciled, although members of the legislature have been informed of it.]

The detective told me that he has been called into the room when the grand jury deliberates. He said that once he presents his case, he is asked to leave, and whatever happens next is a secret; we don’t know. I can’t remember if he said that the prosecutor stays in the room or leaves, but it makes no difference. Whether the prosecutor stays or leaves, Jeff Cunningham is the guy who’s left behind, and he is the leader of the band. He has complete control, and the grand jury members don’t know any different.

I told Willis that this isn’t about me; “you have an innocent man in a federal prison right now as a Navy veteran being targeted as a sovereign citizen. He’s not.” I read the relevant part of Van Balen’s affidavit where it said that Darren was in a specific place with guns, and I said, “This is a lie.” He said, “Well, this is interesting because I deal with facts,” and he understands it’s wrong. I was able to back up everything that he had a question about.

It’s washing over a detective now just exactly how a big a deal this is. He was absorbed with what I told him, as were the panelists on Sunday’s radio show.

I impressed upon the detective that the Madisonville Hoax is the first government-manufactured domestic terrorism event in the country. And I said, going back to the facts: “Fact: Darren wasn’t there. Fact: Darren didn’t have a gun.” I showed him the list of people who were there: “None of these people had a gun.” I went through fact after fact, and he gets it.

I think the word is spreading in the community, and Joe Guy isn’t going to be happy when he comes to the internet and sees his smiling face there, being named as a sheriff who’s attacking a Navy commander as he is. Joe Guy can’tdeny it. And the deputies aren’t happy with the fact that they’re going to this training…which is how the CD was released. It came from the McMinn County Sheriff’s Department.

I’ve given Joe Guy plenty of room; I’ve approached him on a number of occasions.

It’s washing over a detective now just exactly how a big a deal this is. He was absorbed with what I told him, as were the panelists on Sunday’s radio show.

I impressed upon the detective that the Madisonville Hoax is the first government-manufactured domestic terrorism event in the country. And I said, going back to the facts: “Fact: Darren wasn’t there. Fact: Darren didn’t have a gun.” I showed him the list of people who were there: “None of these people had a gun.” I went through fact after fact, and he gets it.

I think the word is spreading in the community, and Joe Guy isn’t going to be happy when he comes to the internet and sees his smiling face there, being named as a sheriff who’s attacking a Navy commander as he is. Joe Guy can’tNow the gloves come off. I’m spreading the word in the community, and he’s not going to like what’s being said. But he cannot deny it.

REPORT #2

Posted By Sharon Rondeau On Saturday, February 1, 2014 @ 4:29 PM In National |

“CREATIVE” U.S. ATTORNEY CLAIMS “TEXT MESSAGES” BETWEEN HUFF AND FITZPATRICK WHICH DO NOT EXIST

by Sharon Rondeau

Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee Luke A. McLaurin made false statements to a three-judge panel at the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday in the case of USA v. Huff

(Feb. 1, 2014) — On Thursday, January 30th, 2014, an appeals hearingwas held at the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, OH on behalf of Darren Wesley Huff, who has been incarcerated at a minimum-security federal prison in Texarkana, TX for the last year and a half on a federal firearms conviction.

Audio of the proceeding is available for immediate listening or download under Case # 12-5581 on the Sixth Circuit’s website. Knoxville Attorney Gerald R. Gulley, Jr. argued for the defense, while the government was represented by Assistant U.S. AttorneyLuke McLaurin, which was verified with the court via telephone.

McLaurin spent 14 months in Iraq “acting as a legal advisor for judges, police, attorneys, and law students as they worked to improve their criminal justice system” working for the U.S. Justice Department. In 2008, McLaurin wrote a paper in which he decried the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal to enforce a decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). “In reaching this conclusion, the Supreme Court held that, although ICJ judgments create international law obligations for the United States, they do not constitute binding domestic law enforceable in United States courts,” McLaurin wrote.

A 2003 graduate of Notre Dame University with a Master’s Degree from the same institution the following year, McLaurin is astudentof classical literature and humanities, which he said enable him to exercise “creativity” in his practice of law.

In October 2011, the trial jury acquitted Huff on a second charge and was originally “hung” on the first, but Judge Thomas A. Varlaninstructedthem to “try again” to reach a verdict.

On April 20, 2010, Huff had traveled to Madisonville, TN to attend a court hearing for CDRWalter Francis Fitzpatrick, III(Ret.), who had been arrested on April 1 for attempting to conduct a citizen’s arreston the longstanding grand jury foreman for violating the Tennessee statute limiting jurors to a one-year term.

In an indictment issued against both Huff and Fitzpatrick stemming from the citizen’s arrest, the foreman was identified as a “juror.” However, in a court brief filed in defense of the government’s conviction of Fitzpatrick in a case arising in December 2011, the state of Tennessee now claimsthat the foreman of any grand jury in Tennessee is not a juror, but rather, a court employee appointed by the judge by an unknown vetting process.

On April 20, 2010, Huff had intended to observe Fitzpatrick’s brief court appearance to show support for a fellow Navy veteran standing up against government corruption. Eastern Tennessee is known for deep, systemic, and widespread corruption which former World War II GIs took into their own hands in August 1946 with “theBattle of Athens,” where they were successful in expelling a corrupt sheriff and his deputies who had assaulted a black man attempting to cast a vote in McMinn County as well as rig the elections.

Huff brought his legally-owned firearms with him that day, which he locked in his truck toolbox prior to reaching Madisonville during atraffic stop at which a Tennessee Highway Patrol officer said he ran a stop sign. At least one of the judges questioned whether or not the traffic stop was legal and if Huff’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated, thereby raising the issue of “suppression.”

Gulley argued that Huff had not intended to use his firearms in “commerce,” as the statute under which he was convicted states. Gulley stated that a local official had testified at Huff’s trial that Huff had carried a .45 in with him to the restaurant, which is refuted by eyewitnessesand amanwho spent the entire day with Huff.

Fitzpatrick resides in McMinn County presently, although he was charged with “intimidating a juror,” “riot,” “interrupting a public meeting,” and other transgressions.

Fitzpatrick has exposed jury-rigging, tampering with court transcripts, and murder in Monroe County, TN, which, like McMinn County, is part of the Tenth Judicial District. Fitzpatrick has made many attempts to testifyto a federal grand jury, but the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee, an Obama appointee, has blocked it, including in a letter written in June 2013 stating that any future correspondence from Fitzpatrick would be discarded without response.

In the audio of Thursday’s hearing, Gulley spoke first in defense of his client, who Gulley said traveled from his home in Georgia to Tennessee on the morning of April 20, 2010 in a matter involving Fitzpatrick, who Gulley described as “a friend or acquaintance” of Huff’s. Gulley stated that on the evening of April 19, Huff had received a visit from an FBI agent who asked Huff what his intentions were in Madisonville the following day. Huff has previously stated, and Gulley reaffirmed, that Huff had told the agent that if he thought Huff’s trip to attend the hearing “was a bad idea,” he would not go. However, the agent did not attempt to convince Huff to stay at home.

On at least two occasions prior to April 20, members of The Fogbow, an Obama sycophant group, placed callsto then-Madisonville Mayor Alan Watson claiming that violent “militia” members planned to “take over the courthouse” on April 20, to which the government responded by dispatching members of the FBI, TBI, local police, sheriffs’ departments, a SWAT team and sniper team, and bomb-sniffing dogs.

William L. Bryan, known online as “PJ Foggy,” claimed responsibility for making the false reports, which members of The Fogbow have affirmed. In September 2010, their group boasted a “White House attorney” and presently contains an attorney involved in defending the fraudulent long-form birth certificateimagereleased by the White House on April 27, 2011 purported to belong to Barack Hussein Obama. A law enforcement investigation plans on releasing “universe-shattering” information next month as a corollary to its investigation which concluded that the birth certificate image is a “computer-generated forgery” early in 2012.

Members of The Fogbow and their associates have watched the Huff and Fitzpatrick cases closely and disseminated propaganda about both.

Foggy and his wife are now reportedly working as Obamacare “navigators.”

On December 9, 2013, a source close to the birth certificate investigation released a videostatingthat “prosecutions are coming” in regard to the forgery and possibly other crimes. It has been speculated that officials at the Hawaii Department of Health led by the late Loretta Fuddy are involved in creating, copying and releasing the fraudulent document to dupe the American public into believing that Barack Hussein Obama, who Fitzpatrick named as a traitorin March 2009, was born in Honolulu, HI on August 4, 1961.

On December 13, 2013, Fuddydiedafter the plane in which she was flying on official business made a water landing, with all other passengers and the pilot surviving. Fuddy’s autopsy reportedly determined that she had died ofcardiac arrhythmia, which her brother Lewis said she did not have.

Fitzpatrick hasfoundthrough eyewitnesses of the events of April 20, 2010 that Huff was not located where the government said he was, as Huff and others were denied admittance to the Monroe County courthouse for Fitzpatrick’s hearing.

Beginning at 7:10 in the audio, one of the judges asked whether or not certain information given by Huff could be suppressed. Gulley stated that Huff’s trial had included “testimony of a law enforcement officer in Madisonville that he saw Mr. Huff take a pistol…and go into the restaurant, where another law enforcement officer said that he was providing a motivational speech to sympathetic persons.” When one of the judges said, “…they were going to take over the courthouse,” Gulley said that if that had been the case, a law enforcement officer, who was present in the restaurant, should have stepped in to prevent such an action, which did not occur.

At 10:20, Gulley stated that the statute which Huff allegedly violated necessitates the coordination of “three or more persons gathering in acts of violence.”

Gulley then repeated his argument against Huff’s having engaged in “commerce,” as stated inArticle I, Section 8of the U.S. Constitution. He stated that Huff’s having brought a legally-owned handgun into another state did not constitute commercial activity.

At 32:00 in the recording, McLaurin was asked whether or not a “conspiracy” had existed among Huff, Fitzpatrick and others to commit violence. McLaurin claimed that Huff “had been planning this takeover of the courthouse for weeks, that he had gone up to Madisonville and consulted with Fitzpatrick; he had sent text messages back saying, ‘We’re going to do citizens’ arrests today…’ he’s coordinating a bunch of other individuals…I think given all of that evidence that’s in the record of this concerted activity over several weeks, trying to put this plan together, I think…the evidence showed that…[inaudible]…planning.”

Both Huff and Fitzpatrick have stated that there was no “plan.”

On Friday, January 31, The Post & Email spoke with Fitzpatrick about McLaurin’s allegations. Fitzpatrick responded that he had met Darren Huff for the second time on April 7, 2010, when he and a former Marine, William Looman, had asked to meet with him to discuss his court-martial of 1990. Fitzpatrick had just spent five days in jail during which he refused food and water to protest what he saw an his unlawful arrest after attempting to carry out the citizen’s arrest of the grand jury foreman. Although on April 7, he had gone to a local hospital for treatment following his ordeal and was not feeling well, he agreed to meet with Looman and Huff in Madisonville later in the day for with only about 45-minutes notice. The three men for a brief time later in the day over coffee. There was no discussion or conversation regarding anything to do with Tuesday, 20 April 2010.

Fitzpatrick stated that he had no communication with Huff, Looman, or anyone else about the events in Madisonville or the date of his assignment hearing scheduled for the 20th. He neither received nor sent any “text messages” with Huff, as claimed by McLaurin.

At Huff’s trial in October 2011, no evidence appearing on the record showed text or phone communication between Huff and Fitzpatrick. “This is them continuing in the perpetration of The Madisonville Hoax,” Fitzpatrick said. The United States Attorney’s office is blocking me from going to a federal grand jury to tell them what the U.S. attorney’s office has been doing. It’s got to be recorded that there’s a violent reaction from me about my name coming up again on Thursday and being named once more contemporaneously as a ‘domestic terrorist’ in the days leading up to the Super Bowl, when you have this alert going on throughout the country. Buses are being stopped, trains are being stopped and and checked, snipers are being set up in the stadium; you have F-16s on the tarmac on an Alert 5 status ready to launch…Obama is creating an environment which is going to be used to take over this country by armed force. That’s what he’s doing here. He’s getting people used to the idea. Look at what happened in Boston – at the Tsarnaev kid; they’re going after the death penalty for him. What did he do? He let off a bomb in Boston, MA. That’s what I’m accused of having attempted.”

He continued:

I’m waiting right now for federal agents to come knocking at my door at any minute. This man named me again on Thursday in participating in a plot to blow up buildings, to harm people, to destroy property and people. He’s named me again as a ‘domestic terrorist’ in this environment in which we are right now as I have described it. There are U.S. attorneys licking their chops looking to find for a way to come and pick me up any second. I’m still named as a ‘sovereign citizen…’ this training campaign is still using my name and my picture in this outrageous campaign which is as much of an invention as was the declaration that came out of the U.S. attorney’s office yesterday.

In the meantime, they are blocking people who know what happened that day from coming out and reporting the truth. That’s significant. While they know that there is a truth to be reported about what happened that day, they are telling lies which are continuing to grow because they are blocking me from getting in to a grand jury. Jeff Cunningham is as guilty of that as any other person. I told Jeff Cunningham months ago, probably a year ago, that I’m named as a domestic terrorist. He said, “Oh, pshaw. You’re kidding.” That was in November 2012, so when I came back in November 2013, I had a copy of theTIME Magazinearticle to show him. I still didn’t get in.

I’ll go back for time #6 in February if I’m not locked up by then.

In the meantime, it’s going to be really interesting to see what the appellate court here in Tennessee comes up with by way of their ruling because they cannot say at this point that the jury system acted properly in how they handled my case when the attorney general for the state of Tennessee has publicly declared, “Walt’s right. These foremen are not jurors.” And I don’t think the U.S. Attorney’s office got that memo. Instead, they’re continuing the hoax. They’re continuing in a manufactured fiction.

I’m living in the twilight zone. I can’t get people in my own community to pay any attention to this. No one. I’ve tried.

This has to stop. My name has not come up as it did on Thursday ever before. Now, four years later, here we are.

Am I able to get into a grand jury and say that this U.S. attorney lied on Thursday? No? Why? Because the U.S. attorney’s office has expressly denied, in writing, permission for me to appear in front of a grand jury and tell the grand jury that these u.s. attorneys are engaged themselves in a plot against veterans. Operation Vigilant Eagle, Sovereign Citizens. This is part of an ongoing plot, and it does trace back to the Obama treason complaint for sure. There has to be a reaction to what happened on Thursday. There are people who can give yup the Madisonville Hoax for what it was.

The Post & Email asked, “The NSA has been collecting all phone records. Where are the phone records and email exchanges in which you were allegedly planning something?”

There’s nothing. I do not know what Darren Huff’s court transcript says, but there’s nothing that leads me to believe that there is anything in Darren Huff’s transcript which says that I was an active planning participant in planning this event that was supposed to happen and got thwarted by the overwhelming presence of law enforcement. It’s all rubbish.

I’m reaching out to so many people. I get so many emails, and it’s like chickens running around, people herding cats. OK, people: focus. FOCUS. And by the way, the government is trying to cement this precedent in place, and they’re using my name to do it. This has got to stop. It’s going to take a lot of people to stand up against this and say, “Stop!!”

What they said on Thursday is a lie. If I don’t stand up against this, then it becomes something that people believe, including law enforcement in my own community.

Let me re-emphasize and restate this. When Darren and Bill left in the late morning or early afternoon of the 7th of April 2010, I had no contact with anybody else at all. I didn’t call Bill Looman. There was a period of time when my internet service was turned off. I don’t remember if that was the case when I got out of jail on April 6, 2010 or not. But I didn’t send any emails to anybody: I didn’t send any to you, to Tim, to Bill…I was dark and quiet. I had no communication with Darren Huff and had no idea he was coming on the 20th.

On April 20, I was searched going into the courtroom. I was unarmed. The first question before the search was conducted, is “Do you have business in this courtroom today?” If the answer was no, the people who were there at the door were sent outside into the rain. They didn’t get searched; they weren’t let in. Another observer was searched, and there are witnesses to that. The hoax continues.

The U.S. Attorney claimed that I was actively planning withDarren. He connected me directly to Darren. The same thing happened in the Tennessee court: Darren was connected to me: We were “planning this together.” But there was no evidence.

There was no communication between me and anybody between 1 April 2010, the day I was locked up, and the 20th, the day of the hearing. Bill Looman and Darren showed up on the 7th, as I’ve explained, to talk about the court-martial. They came; they left, and I didn’t have any contact with anybody else before that, when I was in jail, or after that, when I was home.

I do not text…anybody. I do not do text messages.

I just showed up on the 20th for the hearing, and there was a massive police presence. I was as surprised as anyone else was. When I was in jail in 2011, I found out that prisoners had set up pole cameras the day before the hearing, but I hadn’t known that at the time. In fact, the day that these pole cameras was set up, the 19th of April 2010, I wasn’t in jail, so I would not have known that the Monroe County sheriff had been put upon by the federal government to use inmates to go out and set up pole cameras. I wasn’t in jail myself; I didn’t know this was going on.

There is no testimonial evidence that Darren was at the R. Beecher Witt government building because Darren was never there. Darren was not there; Daren was notarmed. Who cares what he was thinking? He didn’t do anything that was illegal.

I can guarantee you that had Darren been carrying a weapon with him on his person in Madisonville, TN, he would have been stopped, he probably would have been thrown to the ground if he hadn’t gone to the ground on his own volition; he would have been disarmed by either state or federal agents or both; he would have been arrested in Madisonville that day, as anybody else carrying a gun would have been approached and disarmed. Law enforcement officials knew Darren’s weapons had been secured.

Every time I’ve been arrested, it’s been in support of The Madisonville Hoax. These threats are meant to deflect attention away from what we’ve discovered by way of government corruption in eastern Tennessee and the rest of the state. It was brought up in a habeas corpus petition which, to this day has not been answered, “Let Fitzpatrick go; he’s committed no crime.” We have completely quashed any notion that any of these crimes of which I have been accused were passed through a proper jury system that begin with a proper grand jury. So all of these false imprisonments are to support the Madisonville Hoax, which is continuing as recently as Thursday. With what this U.S. attorney said, they’re trying to get me arrested again on a federal charge. You know, as a U.S. attorney, when you make a comment like that in public, then you’ve just let the cat out of the bag that “We’re still working on a case against Fitzpatrick.”

I’ve gone to them to report crime; no one has ever come to me. In that exchange of 10 March 2010 I told FBI Agent Mike Harrell, the head of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, that nothing happened. It was all a hoax. They have planted in the minds of the three judges on Thursday – illegally – that a U.S. Navy retired was actively planning with another navy veteran to come into Madisonville, to commit acts of domestic terrorism, to commit acts of violence to injure people if not kill them. In the meantime, it’s the same U.S. attorney’s office that’s preventing me from walking in to a grand jury and explaining what really happened.

Until we get a large number of people, this is going to continue. This has got to stop.

———————-

Editor’s Note: Many in the media have noted that the Obama regime appears hostile to veterans. The Rutherford Institute has reported that over the last several years, veterans have been falsely accused arrested, intimidated, and harassed by government agents. Obama’s de facto government has sought to block veterans seeking treatment for PTSD from owning firearms.

Unites States Court of Appeals for the federal Sixth Circuit

540 Potter Stewart United States Courthouse

100 East Fifth Street

Cincinnati, Ohio 45202

And many others in a wider distribution

To: Chief Judge Alice M. Batchelder

Copies to: Various and numerous government agencies and law enforcement offices previously contacted

With waning deference and respect I write to you this day to report the scope and operation of a government I’ve been trained to fight against and destroy.

I sound the alert that a fraud is being perpetrated on the U.S Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Federal and state judges, federal and state prosecutors, federal and state law enforcement officers, lower ranking state and federal court officers and Mr. Huff’s court appointed defense attorneys are criminally complicit in the fraud being visited upon this federal appellate Court.

I am commanding you to recognize this fraud and release Navy Veteran Darren Wesley Huff as an innocent man. I demand and command that Mr. Huff’s innocence be publicly and loudly declared and that Mr. Huff’s name be cleared causing to expunge all government records naming Mr. Huff a criminal in matters related to his case that have come into existence since April 2010.

I am commanding that the Court become the forcing function behind causing criminal investigations against those people who have acted to wrongfully harm or injure Mr. Huff resulting in his illegal incarceration presently. I furthermore call upon this Court to lash out and act against the fraud presently being visited upon this bench.

I am commanding that the Court order a federal grand jury assembled for these express purposes. The grand jury is to be impaneled to hear my testimony and inspect my voluminous investigative work product representing proofs and evidences going to Mr. Huff’s innocence and egregious maltreatment at the hands of various government officials; then to broaden their investigation from that starting point. For the sake of efficiency this federal grand jury is to be formed near the community of Athens, Tennessee.

Federal agents, assisted by Tennessee Start law enforcement officials arrested Mr. Huff in Tennessee State on Friday, 30 April 2010 on charges arising from activities that occurred in Madisonville, Tennessee on Tuesday, 20 April 2010 that have become commonly referred to as “The Madisonville Hoax.”

Federal Bureau of Investigation Mark A. Van Balen criminally accused Mr. Huff of being physically present armed with gun(s) at the R. Beecher Witt government building in Madisonville, TN on Tuesday, 20 April 2010. Van Balen further asserted under oath that Mr. Huff, while standing outside the R. Beecher Witt government building armed with gun(s), was thinking about using gun(s) to commit acts of violence against persons and property at that location.

Van Balen stated under oath that Mr. Huff was joined with other armed individuals at R. Beecher Witt government building and outside the building with Mr. Huff who were thinking about joining Mr. Huff at that location in carrying out acts of violence against persons and property using gun(s).

The truth is Mr. Huff was never physically present at the R. Beecher Witt government building at any moment in time on Tuesday, 20 April 2010. Enclosed, see former Sergeant of Marines William Looman’s sworn statement. Other fact witnesses, eye witnesses, ear witnesses have always been available to attest to Mr. Huff’s whereabouts in Madisonville, Tennessee on 20 April 2010.

The truth is that Mr. Huff was unarmed at every moment he was physically present in Madisonville, Tennessee on Tuesday, 20 April 2010. Again I invite focused attention to Marine Sergeant Looman’s sworn affidavit.

State and federal prosecutors, law enforcement officials, judges and court officers and public defenders all blocked unassailable testimonial and physical evidences proving Mr. Huff’s innocence from ever coming forth. They have instead created, enhanced and embellished upon The Madisonville Hoax!

Mr. Huff’s presence in Madisonville, Tennessee on Tuesday, 20 April 2010 was due to the discovery that Mr. Gary Pettway had stood in the Monroe County Tennessee grand jury as its foreman for twenty-eight (28) consecutive years.

The hearing Mr. Huff wanted to attend was part of a process seeking to expose Mr. Pettway’s criminal conduct and eventually effect Pettway’s peaceful removal from Pettway’s illegal yet officially declared job as “grand jury foreman.”

Federal and state government functionaries took action in bad faith against Mr. Huff and myself based on the false claim that Mr. Gary Pettway was, in fact, a legally summoned and impaneled “juror.”

Mr. Gary Pettway testified at Mr. Huff’s October 2011 federal trial passing himself off as a lawful and legal “juror” who was the object of Mr. Huff’s “thoughts” on Tuesday, 20 April 2010.

Mr. Pettway committed perjury by so testifying.

Other state and federal functionaries, mendacious muckrakers, embellished Mr. Pettway’s perjury, adding their own.They reported that Mr. Pettway, with other people and property, were somehow, in someway at risk of being harmed, injured or damaged on Tuesday, 20 April 2010 by Mr. Huff or other innocent men and women who came to Madisonville to attend a public court hearing as court watchers.

This was all accomplished through the guise of The Madisonville Hoax.

State and federal officials used Mr. Huff in The Madisonville Hoax as a pawn to extend the durable myth that criminal court appointed foreman in Tennessee State were (1) jurors, and (2) legally acting as foremen.

One hundred and two (102) days ago, on Friday, 20 September 2013, Assistant Tennessee Attorney General Kyle Hixson, in a brief filed with the Tennessee’s Criminal Appellate Court in Knoxville gave up the game.

Hixson declared in an affirmative admission against state’s-interest that Mr. Pettway had never, in fact, been a “juror.”

The Hixson Brief affirmatively declares that no Tennessee grand jury foreman has ever been a “juror” going back scores of years.

This admission is ominous. Tennessee State law declares that the foreman of the grand jury, like any other member of a Tennessee State trial jury or grand jury must be in fact a juror.

The Madisonville Hoax was a brazen law enforcement operation the design of which was to cloak the decades old practice of criminal court judges illicitly anointing their own non-juror advocates and sycophants into what might have otherwise been a lawful grand jury.

Mr. Huff became a government tool, a pawn in breathing life into their hoax from that day to this day.

I’ve been conducting an investigation into the Madisonville Hoax ever since Tuesday, 20 April 2010. State and federal judges and prosecutors have ruthlessly blocked every effort I’ve made to report the results of my investigation and offer up for examination my investigative work product. I hold extensive proofs and evidences intended for presentation to a seated federal or state grand jury.

My investigation proves no prospective court-watcher who came to Madisonville, Tennessee on 20 April 2010 attempting to attend a court hearing that day carried a gun in the city of Madisonville.

No court watcher intended or planned any violence of any description. I have all their names. I’ve been in contact with them all. I have statements from several.

Creators, facilitators and agitators of the Madisonville Hoax steadfastly maintain to this day, some under their perjured oaths, that Mr. Huff carried a gun in Madisonville on that troubled day.

They continue to maintain and falsely report that other frustrated court watchers, wrongly accused as was Mr. Huff, were carrying guns with intent to carry out violence.

NONSENSE I SAY! NONSENSE!

It’s all a lie. It’s all part of the Madisonville Hoax! None of the court-watchers carried a gun. Mr. Huff did not carry a gun.

Mr. Huff was never physically present at any time at the R. Beecher Witt government building on Tuesday, 20 April 2010.

Mr. Huff’s variously assigned defense attorneys were all on notice that this information was available to them then as now. An exhaustive record has always been available to them as the volume of amassed information, proof and evidences of Mr. Huff’s innocence continued to grow. Mr. Huff’s appointed defense counsels turned their heads away from all of it, laughing up their sleeves as they walked away.

In April 2011 Federal Judge H. Bruce Guyton personally intercepted my direct submissions to the two federal grand juries sitting in Knoxville seeking to appear before one of both of those two assemblies. I was prepared to prove Mr. Huff’s innocence to the grand jury. I was prepared to tell the grand jury, under oath, about my discoveries regarding The Madisonville Hoax and the part played in the hoax by state and federal officials so far as I knew in the spring of 2011.

Guyton personally blocked my submissions.

Guyton then personally refused to grant me permission to appear, deflecting my attempts to the U.S. Attorney for Tennessee’s Eastern District, William C. Killian.

H. Bruce Guyton was the presiding judge in Mr. Huff’s federal prosecution at the very moment H. Bruce Guyton obstructed my efforts to report to the federal grand jury on The Madisonville Hoax.

ONE OF THE LEAD PERPETRATORS IN THE CREATION AND CONDUCT OF “THE MADISONVILLE HOAX!” ~ William C. Killian – U.S. Attorney for Tennessee’s Eastern District ~ CLICK ON IMAGE FOR KILLIAN’S “SELFIE”

U.S. Attorney Killian, named as one of the perpetrators in The Madisonville Hoax, continues to block my efforts to appear before a federal grand jury to this day. See Killian’s enclosed letter dated Friday, 14 June 2013 that reintroduces Guyton’s letter dated Wednesday, 6 April 2011.

I was defeated again just fourteen (14) days ago, attempting to report to a local Tennessee State grand jury regarding the criminal court judges’ take down, take away and the take over of our local grand juries by way of judicial appointments of non-juror foreman.

I call attention once more to the Hixson Brief dated Friday 20 September 2013.

It was the criminal court judge, judicially anointed, county employee non-juror foreman, actually named in my submission as a fraud using the Hixson Brief as evidence, who personally blocked my submission and presentation from being reviewed or heard by the grand jury on Tuesday 17 December 2013, and then ordered a deputy sheriff to escort me from the courthouse.

I’ve aggressively attempted to report these matters to the Federal Bureau of Investigation at various locations in the country.

One of my more significant and memorable contacts occurred on 28 June 2011 (3½ months before Darren Huff’s October 2011 trial). I met with Special Agent Roxanne West for approximately three hours in Knoxville.

I’ve lost count of my reports to the FBI. They are numerous. And all of them ignored and trashed.

One reason why is that The Madisonville Hoax, as an extra added bonus, allowed for federal judges, prosecutors, law enforcement officials and court functionaries to exploit false accusations against Mr. Huff so as to achieve the first ever successful “thought crime” prosecution in United States history.

Van Balen’s sworn affidavit is based upon what Van Balen personally thought, and other FBI agents and law enforcement agents said they personally thought Mr. Huff was thinking about.

“This case is monumental to the FBI because it will set precedent for case law in future domestic terrorism cases throughout the United States.” (LINK)

I am not going into my efforts to report these matters to Tennessee State law enforcement officers that are as unceasing and unrelenting as they are numerous.

One other man who has been regularly defeated in attempting to bring to the attention of a sitting grand jury those actions of a corrupt government, and particularly those actions taken against Mr. Huff wrote this yesterday:

In Devvy Kidd’s piece today she refers to the movie “Open Range” where Kevin Costner tells the complainer who asks what he can do” You’re men ain’t you?” The complainer says he didn’t raise his sons to get killed, to which Costner replies: “You may not know this, but there’s things that gnaw on a man worse than dying.”

Darren’s hearing is one of those incremental crossroads things where we take an extra large step further into servitude it the state prevails.

I am sure no one will die if they make a stand. To put their name to paper and send it to a judge or stand with Darren in the courtroom will not get anyone killed. But to not make a stand and continue the incessant pecking on a computer keyboard will accomplish nothing.

Walt [I’m Walt] has nailed the dire circumstances involved in this hearing. If the state succeeds it will hamper the future efforts of all activists, but most specifically veterans.

The state motto in New Hampshire is: “Live Free or Die.” That’s what Costner was referring to. Are we there yet?

Getting close…

Repeating for emphasis, I SAY AGAIN to this U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, that I’m reporting in this EMERGENCY CITIZEN’S WRIT the scope and operation of the government I was trained to fight against and destroy.

The immediate reaction I expect to cause is that this Court take actions to guard itself against the fraud being committed against it, and after that see to Mr. Huff’s release from federal prison.

Accept my EMERGENCY CITIZEN’S WRIT as but another sworn criminal complaint. I’m calling for the immediate arrests of persons I’m able to name in the conduct of those criminal acts I’m able to credibly report.

Accept this as but one more demand to appear before sitting federal and state grand juries. Accept it as well as an emergency court filing in Mr. Huff’s pending judicial review.

Distribution of this writing is online and wide. Common law grand juries emerging around the country are free to use this actionable information as they wish.

Beware the fury of patient men.

Dauntless and Unafraid in Defiance, Born fighting,

/s/

Walter Francis Fitzpatrick, III

United States Navy Retired

Sworn and issued before me,

/s/ S. Renee Bentley

Monday, the 30th day of December 2013

at 1545 hours local ( 3:43 p.m. EST)

My commission expires: 09-23-2015

Filed: 31 December 2013 at 1006 hours (local) 10:06:53 AM EST

Certified mail #: 7011 0470 0001 6411 0447

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

JAG HUNTER note:

Darren’s only stop in Madisonville on Tuesday, 20 April 2010 was at Donna’s Old Town Cafe.

CLICK ON PICTURE FOR MORE!

Photos below show Darren standing in front of Donna’s eatery with other folks who’d traveled to Madisonville to attend a public court hearing. Darren never made it to the R. Beecher Witt government building courthouse. Donna’s was as close as he got (two-tenths of a mile distant ~ 4 blocks away on a different street).

Darren (facing directly north) standing with two folks behind him (one out of the shot standing to the right as you look at the photograph). Eye witnesses #1 and #2. Identities withheld from this posting. CLICK ON IMAGE FOR MORE!

Blockbuster Exclusive: State of Tennessee: Grand Jury Foremen Are Not Jurors!

IN CONTRADICTION OF STATE LAW

by Sharon Rondeau

Theofficeof the Tennessee Attorney General and Reporter claims that the grand jury foreman is a state employee, not a juror empaneled by state statutes

(Nov. 26, 2013) — The Post & Email can exclusively report that the Tennessee state attorney general’s office has stated on the record that the “foreperson” of all grand juries in Tennessee is IS NOT A JUROR as Tennessee state statutes require.

In December of last year, CDR Walter Francis Fitzpatrick, IIIwasconvictedin the Monroe County, TN Criminal Court of “tampering with government records,” with Judge Walter C. Kurtz presiding.

Defense Attorney Van Irionsubmitted an appeal in the case of State of Tennessee v. Walter Francis Fitzpatrick, IIIprotesting CDR Fitzpatrick’sinnocence. One of Irion’s points was that the grand jury foreman had over-served her legal term of one year. Tennessee Code Annotated (TCA) states that following their service on any jury in the state, jurors cannot be resummoned for a minimum of 24 months.

This past September, in his official capacity as Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Justice Division, Kyle Hixson responded to the Fitzpatrick appeal, writing a brief on the state’s behalf of which The Post & Email first came into possession last Thursday afternoon.

At the bottom of page 13 of his brief, Assistant Attorney General Hixson wrote:

“…the foreman of the grand jury is not ‘impaneled’ from the ‘summoned’ members of the ‘jury pool.’ See Tenn Code Ann. §§ 22-2-306, -307, and -310. The foreperson is ‘appoint[ed]’ by the trial court. Tenn. R. Crim. P. 6(g)(1). As such, section 314, by its terms, does not apply to the appointment process of the grand jury foreperson.”

Section 314 reads as follows:

“22-2-314. Limitation on jury service.

“A juror who has completed a jury service term shall not be summoned to serve another jury service term in any court of this state for a period of twenty-four (24) months following the last day of such service; however, the county legislative body of any county, may, by majority vote, extend the twenty-four-month period.”

Hixson clearly reports that grand jury forepersons do not come from the “jury pool,” are never “summoned” to jury duty, are never “impaneled” as a jurors, and never subject to state laws which deal with jurors and jury duty. Simply stated, Hixson affirms on behalf of the State of Tennessee that grand jury forepersons are never jurors.

However, Tennessee state law commands exactly the opposite: Tennessee statutes say that grand jury forepersons must always be jurors.

Tennessee state law, as tailored and refined by the Rules for Criminal Procedure, require that thirteen (13) jurors (or members) populate all state grand juries.

Hixson has now said, in clear terms in a statement against the state’s self-interest, that criminal court judges add a non-juror to the grand jury by their selection of the foreman. The 12 jurors plus one non-juror combination consequently leaves Tennessee grand juries one short of the lawfully-mandated requirement of thirteen (13) jurors. This has been and remains the case for decades.

Tennessee state law requires that all state residents, in the process of becoming jurors, must initially be randomly selected into the jury pool. From that pool, a smaller number of individuals are randomly selected to be issued summonses to report to the courtroom on a particular day, at which time jurors for the grand jury and trial juries are selected in but a third process of random selection.

In each of these three random selection rounds, the process used must be one that does not allow for the possibility of “human intervention.”

The Tennessee District Attorneys General Conferencedescribesthe grand jury as:

…a group of thirteen citizens chosen from the jury panel. One of these thirteen is the fore person and will preside over the grand jury.

Assistant Attorney General Hixson now reports that criminal court judges have always been permitted to install a handpicked non-juror foreman, that is, to “appoint” the foreman from, as Monroe County Court Clerk Martha M. “Marty” Cook has said, “from wherever they choose“because the state laws that apply to jurors do not apply to non-jurors.

As readers of The Post & Email are already aware, Fitzpatrick’s challenges to the scope and operation of Tennessee grand juries arose upon his discovery in 2010 that the Monroe County Tennessee de facto grand jury foreman,Gary Pettway, had held that position since 1982, aperiodof twenty-eight (28) consecutive years. Moreover, there was no appointing orderor evidence that Pettway had ever been duly sworn in.

Fitzpatrick has demonstrated that the grand juries and trial juries in Tennessee are unduly influenced by prosecutors, grand jury foremen, and court personnel and contaminated by jurors serving consecutive terms in violation of state law(TCA 22-2-314). In one case in Davidson County, a grand jury foreman chosen by a judge was discovered to be a convicted felon, which violates Tennessee statute and required the review of approximately 800 cases over which the illegally-serving foreman had presided.

Grand jury foremen in Monroe County arereportedly“picked from wherever” the judge “chooses” by means of an unknown vetting process. Throughout Tennessee, grand jury foremen have served fordecadesor multiple times with occasionalbreaksin service.

Tennessee Code Annotated provides no special selection process for the grand jury foreman.

Grand jury tampering and judicial misconduct have beenreportedto The Post & Email in Campbell County, Roane County,Sevier County, andMadison County. Crimes against District Attorney General R. Steven Bebbof the Tenth Judicial District have been alleged but dismissedby Tennessee Attorney General Robert E. Cooper, Jr., although members of the Tennessee General Assembly are working toremoveBebb from his post.

Now, for the first time ever, Kyle Hixson explains that (1) Gary Pettway was never a juror, resulting in (2) the law limiting jury service does not apply to grand jury forepersons such as Pettway, and (3) judicially “appointed” Tennessee residents are allowed to serve in a career position as a county employee called the “grand jury foreman.”

Tennessee Code Annotated (TCA) 40-12-206 is the only state statute which details the composition of every Tennessee state grand jury. The law commands that all grand juries be populated with thirteen (13) jurors (members) and up to five (5) alternates. The law does not provide for the judicial appointment of a “foreman” into a Tennessee grand jury.

The same law makes no distinction among the jurors (members). There is no distinction or separate-identity, non-juror “foreman.”

The process by which all jurors are to be selected is described as (1) Randomly populate the “jury pool,” (2) Randomly select potential jurors from the “jury pool,” (3) “Summon” the potential jurors to court for random selection into the grand and trial (petit) jurors for identified term dates, and (4) “Impanel” the grand juries and trial jurors.

Hixson, representing the state of Tennessee, publicly declared in his September 2013 appeals brief that, in Tennessee,grand jury foremen are not jurors.

Restating the state’s now first-time ever publicly pronounced policy position more clearly:

The grand jury foreman is not a juror.

The grand jury foreman does not come from a randomly-selected jury pool.

The grand jury foreman is not summoned to a courtroom to participate in the process of jury impaneling.

Tennessee state statutes that apply to jurors and jury duty do not apply to the grand jury foreman who is, rather, a paid Tennessee state employee.

Judicial appointment of a grand jury foreman who is a “non-juror, as Hixson described the office and process, is illegal under the Tennessee statutes.

The Post & Email asks if the State of Tennessee is committing the same crime as that which the U.S. Navycontinues to perpetrate after more than 23 years in which an honest person is sacrificed and condemned for the sake of preserving a criminal enterprise in which a judge’s personal appointee masquerades as a member of the grand jury, unduly influencing that body and often casting the decisive vote to indict.

———————

Editor’s Note: More articles on Tennessee grand jury foremen and the law will be forthcoming in the near future.

Friday, 22 November 2013

Fitzpatrick: “Court-Martialed for Nothing”

Posted By Sharon Rondeau On Tuesday, November 19, 2013 @ 4:45 PM In National | No Comments

FABRICATION, FALSEHOODS AND FORGERY

by Sharon Rondeau

CDR Walter Francis Fitzpatrick, III has illustrated through his own experience at court-martial that commanding officers have virtually unlimited discretion in formulating charges against a subordinate, at times using the system to retaliate against whistleblowers and others for personal and political reasons.

(Nov. 19, 2013) — CDR Walter Francis Fitzpatrick, III (Ret.) and The Post & Email are preparing the manuscript for a book which will detail the numerous crimes involved in his Special Court-Martial of April 1990 which produced the largest criminal cover-up in U.S. military history. Dozens and perhaps hundreds of officers are aware of the injustice meted out to Fitzpatrick wherein aforged documentcontinues to be maintained as authentic after more than 23 years.

From beginning to end, the process was fraught with procedural violations, dishonesty, fabrication, and finally, the forgery of Fitzpatrick’s name to a “confession” document dated 17 July 1990 which he never saw.

Fitzpatrick hasdescribedthe complicity of Naval officers and the Judge Advocate General’s office as their having been “willing to destroy subordinates to protect the institution.” Having sought redress since the court-martial concluded, Fitzpatrick has named specific individuals as criminals, including his former defense attorney. None will speak on the record or have filed a lawsuit against Fitzpatrick for defamation. Had they done so, Fitzpatrick would be entitled to discovery in his own defense.

After having been missing for almost a year, Judge Advocate General Inspector General Capt. Rand Pixa reported that he discovered the original court-martial record. Capt. Pixa alerted the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, and the next day, NCIS Special Agent Richard Allen discovered the original of the criminal forgery. At that time, Allen discovered other documents in the original record of court-martial that matched the forgery. Because of the matching documents, defense counsel Kevin Martis “Andy” Anderson was named as theprimary suspectin the forgery.

Three months prior, on September 5, 1997, Fitzpatrick had gone to the Pentagon to speak with TJAG John Hutson about the forgery in his file. Although blocked from speaking with Hutson directly, according to Fitzpatrick, Hutson called the NCIS director, who told NCIS Deputy DirectorErnie Simon, “This forgery is real; we have a problem on our hands.” Simon then generated a memo to various parties reflecting that conversation which said that if the forgery could be proved, “it makes the Navy look really, really bad” (see memo below).

The American taxpayercontinues to payfor corruption and abuse within the U.S. military as well as a system of “justice” which is not constitutionally-based, but rather, emerged from the BritishArticles of War.

Many segments of the Fitzpatrick saga which will be incorporated into the book have appeared at The Post & Email with supporting documents released by the Navy in response to dozens of FOIA requests submitted over more than a decade following the sham proceeding.

The forgery remains in both Fitzpatrick’s service record and Record of Court-Martial.

Fitzpatrick describes the military system of “justice” as a“function of command” and describes the proceedings against him as “a vendetta” conducted by a political admiral and his personal staff. Because there is no review by agrand jurybefore charges are leveled against a defendant, a subordinate can be convicted and his career ruined without the presentation of any evidence.

Emails and letters from The Post & Email to Navy personnel about the crimes committed have gone unanswered over the last 19 months. All of the principals involved or those who vouched for the authenticity of the forgery have been contacted over the last three months, with none responding.

The following segment describes how all of the “charges” except one against Fitzpatrick resulted in a “not guilty” verdict and that the only charge for which a “conviction” was pronounced was not a proper one.

—————————–

Bitoff took action and decided what he was going to do with me on the 11th of April 1990, a week after my court-martialwas over. At that time, John Bitoffdid not have the court-martial record. His big initial “B” is at the top of a memo dated 18 April 1990, when he took action on my case. He didn’t formalize it in a letter that day, but that’s when he decided what he was going to do. He did not have the clemency request or the court-martial record at that time. All he had was Tim Zeller’s investigation report.

The thrust of the accusations that Zeller made against me, to include larceny, was for the funeral trip. There were three charges:

Article 92, willful dereliction of duty;

Violation of Article 108, wrongful disposition of MWR fund, and in the specification under charge 2, Zeller articulated misuse of MWR funds for the funeral trip;

Violation of Article 121, was for larceny, in which Zeller accused me of stealing the money that was used for sending the females to accompany the female members of theNordeenfamily. I was accused of stealing that money and using it for myself.

Those are the three charges.

Under Charge 1, they said that I was commuting with the MWR van, but that was all.

For Charge 2, the specification was for the money used for the funeral trip.

The government did not charge me; there was no specific information. Charge 1, Specification 1 was all that the panel found me guilty of. When you read specification 1, it does not lay out what it was that I did specifically to abuse MWR funds. Under that charge, Zeller did not lay out any specifics at all. He didn’t accuse me, for example, of using money to send people to Hawaii. He didn’t accuse me under Charge 1, specification 1 of misspending or stealing money for the electronic purchases; he didn’t charge me under Charge 1, specification 1 with any money that was spent for the funeral trip.

When you read the Letter of Reprimand, you see that the panel found me guilty of taking money for the electronics equipment and spending money for the trip to Hawaii. I’ve explained to you why those two findings are impossible to arrive at.

The government didn’t charge me with either of those events that are criminal in nature, so I’ve been found guilty of nothing. The government did not charge me with misusing, spending or stealing money for the electronics equipment or for misspending money for the trip to Hawaii, but these two things appear in the Letter of Reprimand, which is an impossibility because none of these things were discussed. So where there was specific information for every event, I was found “not guilty.” The government didn’t specify anything in Charge 1, Specification 1. They didn’t talk about any particular event. There was nothing there. They might as well have charged me in Charge 1, Specification 1 with dereliction of duty for the sun not rising in the East this morning. That’s not a crime. They didn’t even do that. “Fitzpatrick is being charged with dereliction of duty.” OK. In charging me with Dereliction of Duty, the government has to name the duty, and I had no assigned duties under the MWR program, so they didn’t do that. Then they have to name the actual event that represents the dereliction. They have to tell me what it was they say I did wrong; they didn’t do that, either. So what was I defending myself against?

Detail of Charge 1, Specification 1 of Special Court-Martial of Walter Francis Fitzpatrick, III in April 1990

Page 1 of court-martial charge and specification report

Page 2

Page 3

The military hearing officer, George Wells, during the court-martial on the 4th of April, said, “The government hasn’t charged Fitzpatrick with a crime under Charge 1, Specification 1. I have some ideas about how we can fix it” – that’s what he said on page 98 and 99 of the court-martial record, but the government never fixed the charge. Also, on block 17 of the Article 32 report, Quigley raised up a red flag and said that the charges were not in proper order. Block 17, which is right above Block 18, said that there is no reasonable grounds to believe that Fitzpatrick committed the events of which he was accused.

The government charged me with criminal acts, and they gave out specifics. In all of the places where specific information was given, I was found “not guilty.” That’s consistent with what Matt Bogoshian said when he said, “There’s little, if any, evidence to believe that Fitzpatrick committed these crimes of which he is accused.” Where a specific event was written down and said, “He did this…he used money for the funeral trip” I was found “not guilty.” I was found “not guilty” of stealing the money for the trip.

Charge 1, specification 1 doesn’t name the duty, and it doesn’t name the act which violates the duty. They found me guilty of nothing. And in doing so, nobody’s ever had to explain how they were able to achieve that result.Fitzpatrick had to know that he was doing something wrong to be accused of willful dereliction of duty. That means he had to know. But they didn’t name the duty that I was assigned. If you look at my fitness report under “Duties Assigned,” you won’t find “Morale, Welfare and Recreation.” I had other duties; the MWR program was assigned to other people to operate. So if Zeller wanted to include me in that, by necessity, he would have had to charge other people, and they never did that.

The government didn’t charge me, and that charge for which I was found guilty, according to the Specification, doesn’t name an act. They didn’t name a crime. Zeller also had his dates wrong; he said that between July 1988 through January 1989, Fitzpatrick was involved in all this bad stuff. Well, the electronics equipment was purchased in August; the funeral trip was in July; what was it that they said I did wrong in September?

So Zeller accused me of breaking regulations from July 1988 to January 1989. Our ship deployed on September 12, 1988. We were overseas; the first week in October, we were just making our approach into the Philippine Islands. We did a pit stop, then from there, we moved into the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean through the Straits of Malacca into the Northern Arabian Sea. So the ship was deployed. So they accused me of nothing and they convicted me of committing a crime of nothing. Under Charge 1, Specification 1, I’m not accused of a crime. And that’s what I’ve been found guilty of. They didn’t accuse a criminal act, and the military hearing officer said, “You haven’t accused him of anything here; you need to go back and fix this, and they didn’t, and that’s the only thing they found me guilty of.

Then you see the post-trial documents which Zeller and Anderson were exchanging which say, “Nobody knows what this guy did.” And Anderson put it right out there; he had it correct in what he was writing in the Response to the Letter of Reprimand which he forged; the information that he put in there is correct. He said what I’ve been telling you: that “there were no warnings issued to Fitzpatrick.” The word “warning” does not appear in the court-martial record. Doug Dolan did not testify. Anderson, maybe to protect himself in future days if they got caught, I don’t know – he told the admiral about the MWR trip to Hawaii, “Yes, there was a trip; it was scheduled; there’s evidence in the court-martial record in the Article 32 that says that there was a message that the ship received, and that it was seen by other people, and that people were sent to this meeting and they attended the meeting.” Chief Wagner said, “Yes, I met with MWR personnel when I was in Hawaii.” So the Letter of Reprimand bears no connection at all to the Record of Court-Martial or to the Article 32 report. The only thing it refers back to is Zeller’s investigation reports, which were from September/October 1989.

Bitoff never looked at the court-martial record, and he never looked at the clemency request. It was all a charade; it was a kibuki dance, to make it look as though what they were doing was legitimate. All the time, it was nothing but a house of cards, a smokescreen, lining up dominoes.

The bottom line is that I’ve been found guilty of nothing.

Every place you look at this court-martial, you find a crime committed by Zeller or Bitoff. Because of what they did, there never was a real Article 32. What was going on was going on behind the scenes, and the Article 32 that was done in public was nothing but showcasing. The same thing can be said for the court-martial. The public court-martial in April 1990 was showcasing. My real court-martial took place on the 12th of October, the day before the Navy birthday, in 1989, and Zeller pronounced me guilty of all these things. Isn’t it interesting that at the end of the day, I was found guilty? What was I found guilty of? Nothing.

If anybody stands behind the court-martial of Walt Fitzpatrick and says he was properly tried and convicted, and we can prove it, then the question becomes, “OK, what was it that Fitzpatrick did? What did he do?” If they point to the Letter of Reprimand and say, “This is what Bitoff’s (hand-picked) panel found: they found that Fitzpatrick misused the money that was spent for the trip to Hawaii, and he misused the money that was spent for the electronics equipment.” Then the next statement to whoever would be, “Where do you find that accusation made against CDR Fitzpatrick in the first place? Cite the page, the witness…” It wasn’t made. They talked about it at the court-martial, but again, nothing came of it.

Then you go back to Zeller’s reports and you find out exactly where this information comes from in the beginning. Who said that it was against regulations to buy the electronic equipment? Well, according to Zeller, it was Doug Dolan. Who is Doug Dolan? I never talked to Doug Dolan about this in the first place; Zeller never talked to Doug Dolan; Zeller made this up.

By the way, the assistant supply officer, Doug Dolan, was not part of the MWR organization. He wasn’t assigned any duties with the MWR.

Doug and I were good friends. I used to have something called the “XO Beat-Me-Up.” We used to go to a bar at the end of the pier called“Olive Oyl’s.” It was named after Popeye‘s girlfriend, Olive Oyl. It was very close to theChina Basin. Before we moved across from Oakland to San Francisco for the overhaul, we did it somewhere else; I can’t remember where it was.

The XO Beat-Me-Up was off the ship. I would walk in, and it was all the chief petty officers and me. The first thing I did when I walked in was take off my collar devices and put them into a glass of beer. It meant, “Chiefs, beat me up. Take me to task. Take me downtown. If there’s a problem with the ship, if there’s a problem with me, please tell me. There’s no attribution here. You’re speaking to me as if I’m a nobody.” I was taking the authority that I held as an executive officer and throwing it into a glass of beer. “Anything that is said here stays here, and I will take action on any problems that you’ve found.”

The chief petty officers ran the ship. One of the highest honors I ever received when I was in the Navy was to be picked as an honorary chief petty officer by the chiefs. I told these guys, “I was an E-1 before I ever became an Ensign, and I’m here now, listening to you as chief petty officers, and you can consider me lower than an E-1. Talk to me.” That’s the way we ran the ship, and we did that regularly. If there was a complaint anywhere on the ship, it would have come to me through the chief petty officer grapevine. And they had free access to me; they could have come in to me at any time and said, “Can you take off your collar devices?” and I would have said, “Sure, chief, whaddya got?” That never happened.

Nobody came to me when we sent people on the funeral trip, and the feedback that I got from everybody – and I’m writing this in the book – was that this was something that they needed to do.

I never talked to Doug Dolan about this. If Doug had come to me, he would have been one of many who would have come to me and said, “Hey, XO, we have a problem here.” But it never happened.

The purchase of electronics equipment that was distributed throughout the entire ship was common fleet practice; it was not a criminal act. So Zeller accused me in this Letter of Reprimand of doing something that was done by every ship I was had ever been on on throughout my career. Every ship did it. There was nothing wrong with it. It was perfectly acceptable and accepted; we put it into our report, we sent our report off to the chain of command…so this nonsense about Doug Dolan is just that: nonsense. No one would have come to me and said, “We’re not supposed to do this” because everybody was doing it!

We had what we called Sight TV on board the ship. In the old days, you would go out on one of the weather decks – and you see this in some of the old World War II movies where the sailors are out on the weather deck watching a movie under the stars. When we were able to have video equipment on board the ship where we could pipe the movies into the compartments for the sailors and they had TVs to watch, they didn’t have to go out on the weather deck; they could watch a movie in their compartment or at their work center. You could do it 24 hours a day and didn’t have to wait for a film to come on. We did training on the TV system; it was an internal television network, if you will.

So purchasing TVs to support this internal television stations was common fleet practice. To this day, I’m sure it’s common fleet practice.

Zeller made up the conversation before and after about my talking to Dolan. I never had those conversations with Dolan, and Zeller accused me of something that was not a criminal act. You see this in Zeller’s investigation report. Zeller attributes the “warning” to Doug Dolan in his investigation report, but there is no sworn statement from Doug Dolan. That never happened. Not even Zeller itemized his interview of Doug Dolan in his investigation report; he doesn’t put it there. Doug Dolan didn’t testify at the Article 32; he didn’t testify at the court-martial. So how does this make it into the Letter of Reprimand? Because Zeller made it up.

The same thing with the trip to Hawaii. Where does that information come from? It says in the Letter of Reprimand that the meeting was never scheduled and it was never held. When you read Zeller’s investigation report, he attributes that position to himself. He made it up himself. When this meeting was discussed during the Article 32, it was 1) Yes, there was a message that it was scheduled, and 2) Yes, one of our chief petty officers attended.

I was never accused of misspending, mishandling or abusing the MWR funds for the trip to Hawaii; that was not an accusation I ever faced. The government never accused me of a crime of any type or kind with regard to monies that were expended for the electronics equipment. And that bears itself out when you take a look at the court-martial record and the Article 32. Then the hearing officer, Wells, said, “You haven’t accused Fitzpatrick of a crime here; fix this. You need to state that he had actual knowledge; you need to state exactly what it is that he did; you need to state the duty, and you haven’t done that. So get it fixed.” So today I stand convicted of…NOTHING.

This is why Zeller and Bitoff and the others said, “We’re not calling in the NIS because they’re not available; we’re going to do this ourselves.” That is nonsense and goes to their criminal intent. They were going to set me up, and the only way they could ensure that they could frame me was to handle the “investigation” by themselves.

Every time you see Bitoff’s signature, he’s involved in making a false official statement. He was told a couple times that there’s nothing in the court-martial where these things that I was reprimanded for were even discussed. Tim Zeller’s investigation reports were never considered at the Article 32 at all. They were kept secret, and everything else that happened in between was all for show. Then when the Letter of Reprimand came out, John Bitoff cited me for things that were never proven and were never brought up during the course of the court-martial.

Letter of Reprimand, page 1

Nobody came in to testify that the MWR meeting in Hawaii was never scheduled and that it never took place. Quite the contrary, people came in and said, “Yes, I saw a message on the meeting,” or “Yes, I attended the meeting.” In other words, Zeller’s accusation was disproved, but Bitoff ignored it.

After the court-martial was over and I started digging into the records to produce evidence of what I told them was going on when it was going on, people started to look at this and the response was “Oh, my gosh. We have a real problem here.” And the NCIS was told to back off by the Judge Advocate General of the Navy so the NCIS didn’t really take a hard look at it until 1997, and when they did, they said, “Oh, my gosh.” And this makes the Navy and the Marine Crops look really bad, and it “proves everything that Fitzpatrick has been talking about for a decade.”

Memo written to various parties from NCIS Deputy Director Ernie Simon stating that if the forgery were proved, it would make the Navy “look really bad.”

In those specific things I was charged with doing, I was found “not guilty.”

I do not know how the vote went. I don’t know why they voted as they did, but my speculation is if they had found me guilty of anything specific, they would have had to explain themselves, and upon appeal it would have all unraveled. If they said, for example, that they found me guilty of stealing the money that was used for the female escorts for the females in the Nordeen family, they would have had to answer for that. Did Fitzpatrick put any money into his pocket? No. What was this money used for? It was spent to send a contingent of females to escort the four females in the Nordeen family at a time of extraordinary crisis. If they had found me guilty of that, they would have had to explain…if the entire crew knew that this was going on and nobody said anything, why 14 months later did this start? What money did he steal? Was this for personal use? No. Did anything go into his pocket? No. And Bitoff even said that. So they would have had to explain themselves: How do you find larceny there?

I was there. This was our “9-11.” The ship was knocked to its knees. We had just taken a sucker-punch in the gut at a very critical time in our operational protocol. The ship had been laid low. The commanding officer’s brother had just been decapitated and dismembered in a car bomb attack by terrorists in Athens, Greece. We came together as a crew, and this is something that the entire crew could participate in. This was the beauty of using the MWR fund. I’m writing this in the book. Everybody could say, “I was part of honoring this man who has been taken down in this terrorist attack.” Everybody contributed to the MWR fund. Every time you bought a soda, a baseball cap, a bar of soap, a belt buckle, you contributed something to the MWR fund. So by using that fund, which was the crew’s money, everybody could say, “I was part of this.” I can’t tell you how uplifting it was for the crew, and the crew was appropriately applauded and recognized for this coming together in this crisis. None of this was addressed in MWR regulations. This wasn’t something that was prohibited. It was not foreseeable, a tragic event, and the crew did what they thought was the right thing to do. There was nothing untoward, nothing done under the table. The entire crew knew, and we took a vote.

The MWR committee is made up of one person from each of the divisions. They called an MWR meeting right after we began considering sending a contingent of people. Only six or eight people showed up, and that wasn’t enough, so I said, “OK. We don’t have time; we have to know from the crew now: thumbs up or thumbs down. So we called a meeting on the flight deck and the entire crew was there. The entire crew was told, and the only people who weren’t at that meeting were, for example, the engineering department. We were at anchor; the engineering plant was still working. We were operating the boilers and all the machinery to keep the ship running at sea. We had a team of watch standards up on the bridge, but not many. So it was everybody on the ship except those people who had to be on watch, and of course, they learned about it from their division mates. I explained the relationship I had with the chief petty officers: I told the crew, “If you have a problem with this, tell your chief petty officer, or slip a note under my door, or tell your division officer.” The chief petty officers were always accessible. There wasn’t any dissent. And of course, in the Article 32, J.J. Quigley wrote that his impression was that “99% of the crew was behind this.” I would have said it was 100%.

So Zeller made up the misuse of the MWR funds. Everything was invented. There was no problem with the MWR fund. There was no stealing of money; there was no misuse of money; there was nothing that was done under the table. Zeller made all of it up. None of the things that Zeller laid out specifically held any water, which means that Zeller and Adm. Bitoff were told at the 32 there were no grounds to bring these charges against me. “You don’t have any grounds.”

Why did they say that they offered me Article 15, non-judicial punishment…which they never did, by the way.

The offering and the declination of the acceptance of the non-judicial punishment is a written event. Bitoff and Zeller handled the Article 15 issue the same way that they handled the Letter of Reprimand. They made believe that I was placed on notice; they made believe that I came in and said “no;” they made believe that Article 15 was offered and declined, but they have nothing in writing from me to support that. When you take a look at the documents that are associated with the Mast package – I used to do this all the time; I did Executive Officer’s investigations and I dealt with Mast issues all the time. There are boxes to check on the preprinted form: “Does the accused accept Article 15 or not?” If you’re at shore, you can decline it; if you’re at sea, you can’t. So I was assigned to an ashore command, under John Bitoff, Combat Logistics Group 1. If Bitoff was going to offer this, he had to do it in writing. And then it had to be delivered to me, and then there’s a block and a signature line for “accept” or “decline.” If it had been offered, I wouldn’t have signed it. At that point in time, the Article 32 hearing officer said, “There is nothing to support these accusations.” If it had been offered, I would have said “no.” They would have pushed the piece of paper across the desk to me and said, “OK, we want you to sign here ‘decline.’” And I would have said “no.” Then somebody would have written in the words “Refused to sign,” and then there would have been a witness to that. So Zeller would have been there, and he would have written in, “Fitzpatrick refused to sign,” and he would have put his initials or his signature after that, and it would have been countersigned by somebody else on the staff, “In my witness, CDR Fitzpatrick refused Article 15.”

This is the point: for this to go to court-martial, Bitoff had to make sure that Article 15 was not an option. In other words, if it had been put in front of me, he knew I would have turned it down, and that would have been written and just more problematic. Later, he said it was offered and that I turned it down. In other words, Bitoff forced the court-martial. He didn’t want me to accept Article 15 if he put that piece of paper in front of me and I put “yes” in the box… By handling the Article 15 package in the same way that they handled the Letter of Reprimand, by pretending that I was a participant in the process and never being a participant in the process, they guaranteed a court-martial. And what was I court-martialed for? Well, nothing. There were no charges to bring against me. There was no substantiation. That was borne out at the court-martial, because everything that they accused me of specifically I was found “not guilty.” In Charge 1, Violation of Article 92, willful dereliction of duty, and the Spec said that I used MWR funds…well, what duty was assigned to you? How did you misuse the funds? That needs to appear in the charge, and it didn’t.

There are two episodes in the Letter of Reprimand: one with the electronics equipment and the other with the MWR meeting in Hawaii. These comparisons show that Bitoff took excerpts from Zeller’s investigation reports and included them in his Letter of Reprimand, but they were never part of the Article 32 or court-martial. In each of the two episodes described in the Letter of Reprimand, we have comments that Zeller made in his investigation reports that track from those reports to the Letter of Reprimand but have no connection to the court-martial record or Article 32. They are directly taken from Zeller’s reports and put into the Letter of Reprimand.

Citations from Zeller’s investigation reports which appeared in Bitoff’s 7 June 1990 Letter of Reprimand but did not come from the Article 32 or the court-martial

Zeller states emphatically that there was no MWR scheduled in Pearl Harbor, HI and no meeting held. Then, parenthetically, Zeller wrote that “evidence used is investigating officer’s only.” This is where we find Zeller identifying himself as the source of this claim, which he made up.

The only testimony and evidence that John Bitoff relied upon was that which was taken from Zeller’s investigation reports. He didn’t have anything from the court-martial or Article 32. Zeller created a fiction which was not repeated at the Article 32 and the court-martial. But it was repeated in Bitoff’s Letter of Reprimand. That’s the only other place where you find these comments.

The references in Bitoff’s Letter of Reprimand which he says came from the court-martial record actually came from Zeller’s investigation reports

Zeller wrote these things in his reports, and then he kept the reports secret. There were three versions of them dated 5 October 1989, 10 October 1989 and 23 October 1989. We have the latter two. I’m sure that if we had the 5 October report, we would have another sentence that we could compare to Bitoff’s Letter of Reprimand.

The second set of comparisons is another example of Zeller having made up the accusation. In the case of the electronics equipment, he made it up by creating a phantom witness with whom he never spoke. In the second episode that deals with the Pearl Harbor trip, Zeller didn’t talk to anybody. He made it up himself!

For each of the two episodes that appear in the Letter of Reprimand – the electronics equipment and the Hawaii trip – the only other place where we find that language is in Zeller’s reports. It did not come from any transcript of the Article 32 or the court-martial. Zeller’s reports are the only other place where this language appears.

Zeller did not present himself or his investigation reports for examination at the Article 32 or at the court-martial. Nobody else came to the Article 32 or to the court-martial and repeated the information that came from Tim Zeller’s reports which was repeated in the Letter of Reprimand. Zeller made it up, so he made sure it didn’t get talked about at the Article 32 or at the court-martial. When push came to shove, he had nothing else; they didn’t find me guilty of anything specific, so Bitoff took it from Zeller’s investigation reports. Very few people knew about those investigation reports. I certainly wasn’t one who knew about them.

Remove the Article 32 transcript and the court-martial transcript. Those transcripts are not used in the Letter of Reprimand. It was as if they never existed. This was never examined; it was never brought up; it was kept secret. Bitoff’s Letter of Reprimand is a false official statement, as are Tim Zeller’s investigation reports. Bitoff didn’t need the Article 32, and he didn’t need the court-martial. He already knew he was going to find me guilty, and he had already determined what he was going to find me guilty of. None of it was ever proven in any of the intervening exercises, one of which was the Article 32 and the other was the court-martial. These things never came out in the transcripts. Instead, Bitoff went back to Tim Zeller’s reports.

Because they rigged everything between the 32 investigation and the court-martial, it was all for show. On the civilian side of the fence, what I’ve just described to you could never have happened. In the circumstance where I was falsely accused in the military system, where it would never have made it through civilian protocols, John Bitoff got it through the Article 32, and then he got it through his own court-martial because he controlled it all. The Article 32 came out and said that there was no reasonable grounds to believe that I had committed the offenses. Well, John Bitoff didn’t care about that; he took it to the court-martial anyway. Then who did he pick? He picked his own people, and he told them, “You’re to find Fitzpatrick guilty, no matter what; end of story.” And so they did. In the civilian world, this is simply impossible.

Tim Zeller put together reports that could not be substantiated in any way at all. He made them up, and we know this because they weren’t substantiated at the 32 or at the court-martial. So all the in-between part was nothing but a demonstration to the public, an illusion, that these accusation were actually considered. They never were.

Blog Stats

Archives

Distinguished military graduate – Class of 1975

The Lone Sailor

Troubled as the restless sea...

Psalm 107:23-25
English Standard Version (ESV)
23 Some went down to the sea in ships,
doing business on the great waters;
24 they saw the deeds of the Lord,
his wondrous works in the deep.
25 For he commanded and raised the stormy wind,
which lifted up the waves of the sea.